Combos are an essential part of lance gameplay in all Monster Hunter games. Lance typically allows three actions before resetting the combo tree. In Wilds specifically, we gain many new options to reset combos beyond the standard back hop or guard dash.

Charge Counter adds an additional layer to lance's combo system, as its power increases depending on how far you are into the combo. In some situations, you might want to use a slower or less powerful attack just to reach the final red level of Charged Counter at the optimal time.

While in focus mode, mid thrusts allow you to strafe in all four directions, enabling small movement adjustments while attacking. High thrusts let you turn in any direction and reach higher targets, which is sometimes required to properly hit monster hitzones.

With the august balance update, we saw massive buffs the the wide sweep, both a raw and elemental damage increase, and when you perform it as the second attack in your combo, the third poke will come out ways faster.

This makes it pretty much one of lance's best dps options in terms of damage coming from non counters.

So in neutral you want to use as many wide sweeps and high thrusts as possible, while using mid thrusts for positioning. The wide sweep is still rather slow, so you really only want to squeeze it in when you know the monster's opening is long enough. But over time you'll learn these openings and how to maximize your damage output.

All possible combos in Wilds perform similarly, but two stand out quite a bit. These work best when the monster is downed or you have a bigger opening. Almost all variations have a leaping thrust variation, that is slightly weaker in terms of damage, but allows for easier reposition/gap closing.

With the wide sweep and high thrust buff, the best combo obviously includes both of these moves. Due to the increased wide sweep recovery, and the fact that a poke in third place deals more damage than in second place, and the fact that we can't start with a wide sweep, the best combo becomes high thrust, wide sweep, high thrust and then one of the finishers.

When using a raw or status weapon, it's best to end with a charged counter, as even if you don't actually counter anything, it provides more raw dps than the triple thrust finisher.

If you are at a distance, you can always do the leaping thrust variation to close the gap and then transition into the normal combo. You trade a bit of damage for the gap closing ability.

A wide sweep variation is often the best follow up after a power clash, as it usually leaves you at a distance where this combo perfectly catches up to the monster and your other follow up options just miss.

Another advantage that these sweep combos have is that they are very sharpness efficient, as we do slower but heavier hitting attacks, resulting in less hits of sharpness consumed per second.

When using an elemental weapon, and hitting a decent elemental weakspot (eHzv > 10) we can make use of the high elemental modifiers of mid thrusts and the triple finisher. The damage of the wide sweep is too good to give up so the combo becomes: mid thrust, wide sweep, mid thrust, triple finisher.

If the raw hitzone is very high compared to the elemental hitzone, the above high thrust charged counter combo is still more effective, as lance is currently still more of a raw weapon. It's just because all artian weapons get the element for free we get free bonus damage by matching the element.

Again we can also perform a leaping thrust variation to close the gap and then transition into the combo.

For a long time this was considered the best lance combo in the game, but due to the balance patch, wide sweep combos are now superior. However, this combo still offers the highest elemental damage output and is also the fastest combo.

Because of it's speed it doesn't just let you react to any incoming attack the best, it also reaches the final level of Charge Counter the quickest.

So the true power of this combo doesn't necessarily come from the damage it deals, but rather from it's reaction speed and ability to reposition.

Additionally it synergizes the best with corrupted mantle as the mantle only provides extra damage ticks on mid thrusts and triple thrust, making this combo really strong while wearing it.